Typical light duty liquid or gel dishwashing detergent compositions contain from about 15% to about 30% anionic surfactant. Formulation of concentrated detergent compositions are becoming ever more popular, especially in the laundry and automatic dishwashing detergent compositions. Concentrated compositions address many environmental concerns by reducing the amount of packing and product material needed; however, it is often difficult to formulate stable compositions. This is especially true for detergent compositions containing magnesium (used particularly for its grease cleaning ability in light duty liquid detergent compositions). Concentrated formulation decreases the water content in the product, therefore, the surfactant should be neutralized with magnesium hydroxide or magnesium oxide. This neutralization process, however, results in a a highly viscous middle phase which makes processing impossible.
It has been found that a concentrated magnesium containing surfactant mixture can be formed by mixing certain water-soluble saccharides, i.e sucrose, during the surfactant neutralization step. The concentrated surfactant component is thus easier to handle and to formulate into a detergent composition, particularly a light duty liquid or gel dishwashing detergent composition. Also, the presence of sucrose in such compositions improves the stability and dissolution of the final detergent product.